Wet & Wild Main Street, Buffalo, New York - 20220926.webm

Automobiles splash floodwater high into the air as they traverse a deluged section of Main Street just north of downtown Buffalo, New York on a dismal September 2022 afternoon. This and the previous day saw a pattern of so-called "lake effect rain", a fairly common occurrence in the region during autumn cold snaps (and also continuing into the early part of the winter as the much more notorious phenomenon of lake-effect snow) during which narrow, shifting bands of torrential downpours, fed by condensation from the relatively warm waters of Lake Erie into cooler air aloft, alternate with areas of partial clear sky. The weather station at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport recorded a total of 2.25 inches of rain over the course of the storm, while as usual areas to the south saw even more, leading to widespread street flooding such as that seen here.